Building FlightGear - Debian

Work in progress This article or section will be worked on in the upcoming hours or days. Note: Revise due to update to FG 2.10 See history for the latest developments.

HowTo build FlightGear 2.10.0 or bleeding edge development version, hereinafter simply called GIT, on GNU/Linux Debian Squeeze and Wheezy.

The meaning of this article is to be a short, checklist like, overview of the specific steps to compile FlightGear and components on Debian. For more detailed information please refer to the main article Building FlightGear on Linux.

If you don't want to get your hands dirty, have a look at Scripted Compilation on Linux Debian/Ubuntu.

For beginners with compiling it is highly recommended to follow this guide step by step. Any modification to the commands may cause trouble.

Requirements and Preparations

You need more than just an OpenGL capable graphics card including a proper installed driver supporting direct rendering.
Also a bunch of packages (as well as some of their dependencies) are required to compile FlightGear:

Tools

su -c "apt-get install automake bzip2 cmake fluid g++ gcc git make \
  subversion tar"

fluid: required for fgadmin only.

Libs

su -c "apt-get install libalut-dev libboost1.42-dev libc6-dev \
  libcurl4-openssl-dev libgl1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev \
  libgtkglext1-dev libopenal-dev libpng12-dev librsvg2-dev libsvn-dev \
  libtiff4-dev libxml2-dev"

If you prefer you might replace libcurl4-openssl-dev by libcurl4-gnutls-dev.

Add libudev-dev if you need FG's feature -D EVENT_INPUT=ON.

During installation development packages of libraries that are going to be compiled must not be installed. They can safely be re-installed after compilation. Namely here these might be libplib-dev, libfltk1.1-dev, libopenscenegraph-dev and simgear-dev.

Build and install

Because we are going to install versions different to the ones in the Debian repositories, it is recommended to install FlightGear in a place independent of the base system, such as /usr/local/FG-2.10.0 or $HOME/FG-2.10.0. This way also has the advantage of easily managing several FlightGear versions, even with different versions of OpenSceneGraph and/or plib, simply by altering the installation prefix. I suggest to make this directory writeable by the user so there is no need to become root for the make -j2 install commands. We'll use $prefix as a placeholder for this directory.
Another placeholder will be $srcdir, it stands for the absolute path to the directory which is supposed to keep the folders of the various source codes. So, in the instructions below, you have to replace these with the local paths or even export them (in every terminal you're using them) for the process:

export prefix=$HOME/FG-2.10.0 && mkdir $prefix
export srcdir=$HOME/src && mkdir $srcdir

Have in mind that the data is a relatively large download (GIT about 5 GB and 2.10.0 650 MB). So, to save some time, it is a good idea to fetch it while building the sources.

For some basic info on git commands for FlightGear users we have a git for dummies section.

To have a build with debugging symbols add -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="RelWithDebInfo" to SimGear's and FlightGear's cmake options.

libfltk

FLTK only is required for fgadmin, which is content with libfltk-1.1, and fgrun, which minimum is libfltk-1.3.
Wheezy: Just install package libfltk1.3-dev if you're planning to use either of them.
Squeeze: For fgadmin just install package libfltk1.1-dev. To compile fgrun, too, build and install FLTK-1.3 instead:

cd $srcdir
wget http://ftp.easysw.com/pub/fltk/1.3.2/fltk-1.3.2-source.tar.gz
tar xzf fltk-1.3.2-source.tar.gz
cd fltk-1.3.2
./configure --enable-shared --prefix/$prefix
make -j2 install

plib

2.10.0 and GIT: Latest SVN is required.

cd $srcdir
svn co https://plib.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/plib/trunk plib
cd plib
sed s/PLIB_TINY_VERSION\ \ 5/PLIB_TINY_VERSION\ \ 6/ -i src/util/ul.h
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$prefix
make -j2 install

OpenSceneGraph

For 2.10.0 on Wheezy skip that step and install package libopenscenegraph-dev instead.
GIT users, especially developers, most likely want to use the latest DeveloperRelease or even bleeding edge code here.
2.10.0 and GIT:

cd $srcdir
svn co http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/osg/OpenSceneGraph/tags/OpenSceneGraph-3.1.1 OpenSceneGraph
mkdir osg-build && cd osg-build
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" -DLIB_POSTFIX="" \
      -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH="$prefix" $srcdir/OpenSceneGraph
make -j2 install

SimGear

2.10.0 and GIT:

cd $srcdir
git clone git://mapserver.flightgear.org/simgear

2.10.0 only:

cd simgear
git checkout -b 2.10.0 origin/release/2.10.0

2.10.0 and GIT:

mkdir $srcdir/sg-build && cd $srcdir/sg-build
cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH="$prefix" $srcdir/simgear
make -j2 install

FlightGear source

2.10.0 and GIT:

cd $srcdir
git clone git://mapserver.flightgear.org/flightgear

2.10.0 only:

cd flightgear
git checkout -b 2.10.0 origin/release/2.10.0

2.10.0 and GIT:

mkdir $srcdir/fg-build && cd $srcdir/fg-build
cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH="$prefix" $srcdir/flightgear
make -j2 install

FlightGear data

2.10.0 only: Please have a look at the mirror list for a server close to your location.

cd $prefix
wget http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/flightgear/ftp/Shared/FlightGear-data-2.10.0.tar.bz2
tar xjf FlightGear-data-2.10.0.tar.bz2

GIT only: For slow/unstable internet connections it is recommended to download the fgdata.bundle instead of cloning the data.

cd $prefix
git clone git://mapserver.flightgear.org/fgdata data

Trial run and finishing process

When all the builds are done and the data download has finished it is time for a test run:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$prefix/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
$prefix/bin/fgfs --fg-root=$prefix/data

The fgfs binary needs to find our self compiled libraries at runtime and therefore we have to tell the linker (ld) where to find them. That is what the first line here does. You might want to add this line to your $HOME/.bashrc to have this as a persistent setting (may cause problems, if one has installed more than one version of FlightGear!).

Have in mind, the $prefix and $srcdir variables are available for this session only. For future use of these lines, replace them by the real paths.

To avoid the need to give the path to the fgfs command each time, you might consider to create a symlink at a place that is listed in $PATH:

ln -s $prefix/bin/fgfs $HOME/bin/fgfs

For the future, if you want to start FlightGear from command line have a look at fgfsrc, if you prefer a graphical user interface continue with compiling fgrun.

Optional Software

Some of the below instructions possibly are not up to date. Please feel free to revise them.

Feel free to add the commands to install other FlightGear related projects.

Atlas

One more Package has to be installed:

• libglew1.5-dev

cd $srcdir
git clone http://mapserver.flightgear.org/git/atlas
cd atlas
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$prefix --with-fgbase=$prefix/data
make -j2 install
cp -R $srcdir/atlas/src/data/* $prefix/data/Atlas

$prefix/bin/Atlas

fgcom

For fgcom install package

• libasound2-dev

cd $srcdir
svn co https://appfgcom.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fgcom/trunk fgcom
cd fgcom/src
make -j2 install_BIN=$prefix/bin INSTALL_DIR=$prefix/fgcom \
   PLIB_PREFIX=$prefix [OPENAL_PREFIX=$prefix] install

Create an .alsoftrc file as shown in FGCOM Testing.

fgrun

To build fgrun libfltk1.3-dev is required, see libfltk above.
2.10.0 and GIT:

cd $srcdir
git clone git://gitorious.org/fg/fgrun.git

2.10.0 only:

cd fgrun
git checkout -b 1.7.0 origin/release/1.7.0

2.10.0 and GIT:

mkdir $srcdir/fgrun-build && cd $srcdir/fgrun-build
cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH="$prefix" $srcdir/fgrun
make -j2 install

2.10.0 and GIT:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$prefix/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
$prefix/bin/fgrun

TaxiDraw

Obsolete for airport creation, use WorldEditor instead. It is still useful for working on ground networks.
To compile TaxiDraw we need to install some more packages:

• either libcurl4-gnutls-dev or libcurl4-openssl-dev for curl.h
• wx2.8-headers (at least, maybe even more than just that one. Please report!

su -c "aptitude install [libcurl4-gnutls-dev|libcurl4-openssl-dev]"
cd $srcdir
git clone git://mapserver.flightgear.org/taxidraw
cd taxidraw
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$prefix
make -j2 install

TerraGear

Automatic Installation

If you are familiar with "download_and_compile.sh" script from Brisa you can donwload this script: http://clemaez.fr/flightgear/terragear_download_and_compile.sh This script is similar to Brisa's one (only usable for Debian/Ubuntu/Mint...). This script installs TerraGear (latest version) and terragear-gui.

How to use it?

sh terragear_download_and_compile.sh -j 2 ALL

-j 2 option is for Dual Core, you can tune it as you want. (personnaly I have Quad Core and I use -j 12 but I need to accept to don't use my aircraft during compilation ;) )

Need some help?

Look at forum topics : http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=14849

After success installation you can exectute this command line in the terragear/bin directory in order to display every --help for each binary files:

cd terragear/bin && for i in `ls`; do echo ""; echo "################# "$i" ##############"; ./$i --help; done

Basic Installation

To resolve some of the dependencies of TerraGear the GIT sections of steps plib, OpenSceneGraph and SimGear have to be done first. Additionally some packages and their dependencies have to be installed:

• libgdal1-dev, gdal-bin
• libproj-dev, libogdi3.2-dev (probably even more, please report!)

Wheezy: As of June 2nd there is a bug (#617240) in package libmysqlclient16 which causes compilation to fail. If it is not fixed by the time you're building TerraGear, upgrade to the version from Sid.

cd $srcdir
git clone git://mapserver.flightgear.org/terragear-cs

Two of the dependencies have to be installed manually (See README.gpc and README.newmat for details.):

# gpc install
mkdir $srcdir/gpc232 && cd $srcdir/gpc232
wget ftp://ftp.cs.man.ac.uk/pub/toby/gpc/gpc232-release.zip
unzip gpc232-release.zip
sed s/DBL_EPSILON/0.000001/ -i gpc.h
grep -A 18 '# Unix/Linux makefile' $srcdir/terragear-cs/README.gpc > Makefile
sed "s|/usr/local/lib|$prefix/lib|" -i Makefile
sed "s|/usr/local/include|$prefix/include|" -i Makefile
make -j2 install

# newmat install
mkdir $srcdir/newmat11 && cd $srcdir/newmat11
wget http://www.robertnz.net/ftp/newmat11.tar.gz
tar xzfv newmat11.tar.gz
make -f nm_gnu.mak
cp libnewmat.a $prefix/lib
mkdir $prefix/include/newmat
cp *.h $prefix/include/newmat

Finally TerraGear itself (See README for details.):

cd $srcdir/terragear-cs
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$prefix
sed s/-O2// -i src/Lib/TriangleJRS/Makefile
make -j2 install

WorldEditor (WED)

Because this is the same for all Linux distributions the instructions are not listed here separately. Please refer to our lead WED article.